


Danger Zone

by ichikun



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Cutting, Drinking & Talking, F/M, Heavy Angst, Suicide Attempt, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ichikun/pseuds/ichikun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don’t think about her. Really, you don’t want to. You absolutely don’t want to think about her strawberry-blonde hair and the way it falls down her back; her soft, scarlet lips, and how round and perfect they would be to kiss; the stupidly cute look of disbelief she gave you when she found all those gifts you bought her; how happy she was at the dance when you told her she would win the Field’s medal for mathematics; how graceful she is at ice skating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Courtesy Call

Don’t think about Scott. Don’t think about the time that slanty-jawed, wolf-faced fucker made out with her behind your back.

Don’t think about Derek. Don’t think about how he always looks down on you, because you’re obviously just a burden, and a pathetic human that he’s now feeling increasingly responsible for. Speaking of, try not to think about how absolutely weak and slow you are compared to them. After all, it seems like you’re the only damn human left in Beacon Hills.  
Don’t you fucking think about Peter Hale. Don’t think about how he hurt her, and how absolutely helpless you were to protect her when he attacked, and how, when he offered to make you more suited to do so—to make you one of them—you refused like the moron you are.  
Don’t think about Jackson. Just don’t. Don’t. Don’t—damn, now you can’t get the image of him out of your head. He’s naked, and she’s naked, and they’re tangled together, groping and breathing hard and—great, now you’re thinking about Jackson naked.  
Don’t think about her. Really, you don’t want to. You absolutely don’t want to think about her strawberry-blonde hair and the way it falls down her back; her soft, scarlet lips, and how round and perfect they would be to kiss; the stupidly cute look of disbelief she gave you when she found all those gifts you bought her; how happy she was at the dance when you told her she would win the Field’s medal for mathematics; how graceful she is at ice skating.  
You absolutely don’t want to think about how those last two were ruined by Peter Hale—Jesus Christ, stop thinking about Peter Hale—or about how every fucking time you and her are together, something happens and you can’t do anything to keep her to yourself for just a minute longer. You absolutely don’t want to think about—  
No, stop it, now you’re at it again. Put it down. You can do this. Breathe.  
Don’t think about mom because then you might remember she’s dead.  
Don’t think about dad. Don’t think about how now you’re his responsibility. You, asshat.  
Dad’s got a big enough mess on his plate, and werewolves and kanima are way out of his simple police department’s league—the last thing he needs is his hyper-active, god damned depressed, sneaky-ass weasel of a son messing things up for him.  
Don’t think about—  
why are you doing this you just keep thinking about the exact things you’re telling yourself not to think about this is all so counterproductive holy shit.  
Stop. Breathe.  
You need to get away from the desk and the pills and the scissors and you need to lie down and go to sleep.  
The clock says it’s only 6:30 in the afternoon.  
Well, you always have told yourself you should start sleeping more.  
You pull your undershirt and hoodie up over your head and toss them to the floor before crawling into bed with your tail between your legs, the red lines on your wrist marking yet another loss to yourself. You press your lips to your arm, trying to make the blood less obvious on your paper-white skin, and that’s when the shaking begins.  
You try to take some deep breaths, calm yourself down again. Maybe it’s the Adderall, or maybe you’re too anxious—either way, you need to stop. You keep telling yourself it needs to end, and that you are in control.  
I am in control. I can do this.  
You squeeze your eyes closed, try breathing deeply, but you can’t calm down.  
These shakes are always the worst.  
Maybe I can’t do this.  
There’s a crescendo—your legs kick violently on the bed, and your torso heaves and shakes as you slam your arms on either side of you, trying to steel yourself under the sheets. The springs under the mattress squeak, and there’s a dull cacophony of thuds that accompany each individual spasm. You haven’t done this shit since mom died.  
“Stiles?” your dad calls from down the hall in his empty bedroom.  
“Yeah?” you respond, grateful your body has decided to stop recreating scenes from the Exorcism of Emily Rose before you start vomiting pea soup.  
“You okay in there?” He sounds like he’s getting up, coming to check on you.  
A small “I’m fine, dad” forces its way out of your throat. He either didn’t notice the crack in your voice or elected to ignore it. Either way, you’re grateful when the sound of footsteps stops, then recedes back into the direction of the lonely master bedroom.  
Come on, you dick, you chastise yourself. That man’s wife is dead—the only woman he has presumably ever loved is rotting in some ditch in the dirt—and he still holds himself high. He’s a great man, and here you are, a whiny little teenager with a few werewolf problems, acting like it’s the end of the world.  
You really are pathetic.  
You’re the most pathetic son of a bitch in this entire city, maybe you really should just—  
No, don’t think that.  
No, you really are a loser. Just stop being such a burden on everyone and—  
You do this every night. For once, just go to sleep without beating yourself up. You’re not so bad.  
Yes you are and who the fuck is knocking at the door it is 7:00 and you were in the middle of channeling your inner Gollum/Smeagol routine.  
You groan as the knocking continues, thinking of it as nothing more than a minor annoyance—a repetitive sound keeping you from sleeping—but then you realize it means someone wants something and you clam up. Who the hell could it be?  
“Stiles,” Dad calls, “get the door!”  
“I’m in bed,” you grumble, rolling over to bury your head in the mattress.  
You hear a faint sigh, and the sound of footsteps. It’s weird, and unnecessary, but when they pass in front of your door, you tense up. For what feels like 2 seconds too long, you hold your breath, but then they’re gone, and you begin to wonder if maybe it really is just the pills making you so jumpy, because there’s no sensible reason for that to give you a panic attack.  
What sounds like pleasant conversation bubbles up from downstairs and you try to hear for any indication whether or not the person at the door is there for you.  
You take the subsequent sound of two pairs of feet marching up the stairwell as a big enough clue.  
Please don’t be Scott. Please don’t be Derek. Please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t be Jackson naked. No, stop thinking about Jackson naked!  
You can’t, he’s hot (hotter than you’ll ever be, at least).  
Damn it.  
“Stiles,” your dad says, opening the door slowly, “Lydia’s here to see you.”  
With just those few words, your heart races, and you’re angry and confused and you hate yourself all over again—Swear to God, I’d be fucked if I were a werewolf.  
But you can’t just turn her away. She’s obviously here for something important, otherwise she wouldn’t have come. You push off the bed sheets—which had clung to your sweaty chest—and force yourself to sit up.  
“Come in,” you mumble, tugging on the hoodie you had haphazardly thrown at the foot of your bed.  
Lydia steps in quietly, and you swallow hard. She’s not wearing much make-up—nothing to bring out her eyes or her lips or the definition of her cheekbones—and her hair falls knotted and tangled down her shoulders. She barely looks like herself. The last time you saw her so disheveled, she’d spent two days running around naked in the woods.  
But there was something else, and when your dad leaves and she steps further into the light, you can see that her eyes are a little puffy, as if she’s been crying.  
“Lydia, what’s wrong?!” you can’t help but ask, panic flooding your thoughts.  
“Nothing,” she half-mumbles, putting on her award-winning smile.  
“Lydia,” you urge, and her lips tremble, but the edges of her lips stay upright.  
“I, uh, you know. Wanted, to come visit, you know?”  
She looks for somewhere to sit, deciding finally on your computer chair.  
There’s an awkward silence as she untangles a knot in her hair. “Jackson—“ she blurts, but she’s cut off by your dad.  
“Stiles, I just got called in. There was a robbery at the drug store. I’ll be back…soon.” He nods to you on his way past your door, and you return the gesture absently, only half listening while you look at Lydia, who is struggling to put together her thoughts—a decidedly un-Lydia thing to do.  
“Jackson?” you quietly offer once you hear the front door slam shut.  
“He left last night.”  
You were about to start offering his…condolences, or whatever you would call it when the person isn’t dead, but she kept going. “I—I mean, it’s not like it was out of the blue or anything, we’d discussed it. After the whole…kanima thing…Gosh, I still feel weird even saying that. Well, after everything, and talking it over with Derek…I don’t know, they decided it was best he left. I’m not even…That’s not even why I came over here. God, you must think I’m horrible coming to you because my boyfriend left, considering you, you know, whatever. No, God, no I’m not here because of that. Not entirely. I mean, yeah I’m upset about it, too, like, really upset, you know? But—“  
She pauses, inhaling sharply, trying to regain her composure.  
“Whew, I, uh, really lost it there for a second. Sorry.”  
“It’s…fine. Go on.”  
She takes another strand of hair and wraps it around her finger, but not in a ditzy sort of way. She’s the furthest you could possibly get from that right now. Lydia’s been fidgeting since she walked into the room, she just needed to busy her hands with something.  
“So. You know about those…freaky visions I’ve been having?”  
“Having?” You ask, concern bubbling again. “As in, present tense?”  
“Yeah,” she says on a shaky breath. “Yeah, as in present tense.”  
“I thought those went away after Peter came back!” You can’t control your tone.  
“Things were—a little hectic in that home stretch, ok?” Lydia’s voice is shrill, panicked. “And, you know, for a week or two, I was…so fine! But, I don’t know, they aren’t gone gone yet, and I can’t turn them off, and I don’t know…what they mean, and I’m scared, and I am nervous, and I need you to to calm down because you’re visibly tense right now and It’s going to make me hysterical, so, please!”  
You didn’t realize you had stood up and taken several steps close to her, or that literally every muscle in your body had clenched. Even your butt muscles.  
“Sorry, sorry.” You go back to the bed, sitting further from her than before. She needs space.  
“I’m just really overwhelmed,” she says after a slight pause. “Jackson leaving, these visions, werewolves, teenage hormones…” Her voice trails off as she looks over at your desk, her eyebrows knitting. You curse to yourself when she picks up the scissors you left bloody on the counter.  
“Stiles,” Lydia says quietly, her eyes fixated on the dull metal blades.  
You panic. “Lydia, please, put it down, it’s just—“  
“Stiles,” she says again, quieter. “I know.”  
What.  
What does she know? You hurt yourself? The scissors seemed to be some pretty damning evidence, and it wasn’t like Lydia to state the obvious. She knew how you felt? Unlikely, even you didn’t want to look at that unhealthy knot of emotions.  
She reaches her hand out, and you subconsciously slip your wrist into her tiny fingers.  
“I told you, I’ve been seeing things.” Her voice is so quiet, you almost can’t hear her. “This is why I came.”  
She delicately pulls the sleeve of your hoodie up past your elbow, looking somberly at the reddish lines running across your pale skin.  
“You’ve gotten so good at smiling,” she says after what feels like hours, pulling the sleeve back down. Her eyelids are fluttering like mad as she looks up at you, blinking away whatever tears are threatening to ruin her makeup.  
“Lydia, it’s ok. I was…being a dumb kid, you know? It happens.”  
“I know,” she says again, pulling down her knee-highs. Dozens of thin lines run up and down her otherwise-flawless legs, and your breath catches.  
A few small tears manage to snake down Lydia’s cheek, but the two of you stare at each other’s damaged selves in still silence.  
“What are we doing,” you finally say with only slightly forced laughter. You throw your arms out, gesturing to…everything. “Seriously? What the hell is wrong with us?!” You run your hands through your short hair, looking around. “It’s, like, a Friday night? My dad won’t be home until God-knows-when…”  
“What are you saying?”  
“I’m saying…”  
What are you saying?  
“I’m saying, let’s get drunk and fucking—I don’t even know, let’s just do it.”  
“Do it?”  
Lydia raises an eyebrow. You realize what she thinks you mean and immediately correct yourself.  
“Not that. It. Like. I don’t know, be the stupid hormonal teenagers we are. Let’s blow this pit up. The two of us.”


	2. The Cold Boot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your buzz is starting to die off, and it feels like a lead weight has started to form in the back of your brain. You want to curl up and sleep for the next forever.

The two of you are lying on the floor, staring at each other through the empty bottle of Jack between you.  
“You are so drunk,” you half-mumble, half-laugh. She giggles, a bubbly, almost-wonderful sound.  
“You are, too,” she insists.  
“Lydia, you drank like…the whole damn bottle. I had maybe a sip.”  
If you were less tipsy, you’d probably recall you’d actually had something closer to 4 or 5 shots throughout the course of the night.  
“Whatever,” Lydia says, rolling onto her stomach, her voice muffled by the carpet. Considering how much she’d had to drink, you’re surprised she’s only just crashing now. You would’ve passed out hours ago.  
“Are you going to sleep?” you tease, reaching out to tug her ear. She swats your hand away lazily before pulling herself up, resting on her elbows. She sucks her cheeks in and looks ahead to nothing in particular.  
“I’m just so tired,” she says after a while.  
“Because you’re drunk and it’s, like, 3 in the morning,” you say, rubbing your eyes. Your buzz is starting to die off, and it feels like a lead weight has started to form in the back of your brain. You want to curl up and sleep for the next forever.  
“I mean….” There’s a pause as her drunken mind tries to catch her lost thought. “I mean in general, you know?”  
You stare at your ceiling before you mutter in agreement.  
“No one talks to me anymore,” she says quietly. “I mean, aside from you…”  
You sit up, looking over to her milky-white legs. A bold hand reaches out—slender, bony fingers curling around the silky white fabric of her tights. When she doesn’t react, you tug them down. The thin red lines stand out against her pale legs.  
What’s wrong with you?  
Nothing. I’m a teenager.  
You’re taking advantage of her. You piece of shit.  
You hate yourself as you move closer, and she turns to lay on her back and watch as you situate yourself between her legs. You bring her bony ankle up your lips, pressing them to her scabbed flesh.  
Her eyelids flutter, and her shoulders flush, and you kiss her leg up and up, leaning down, your cheek is on her thigh, your hand on her hip, her delicate hip, and her blood is rushing, you can swear you hear it,  
“What is it?” she breathes when you don’t move any further.  
“I’m just so tired,” you sigh, ignoring the stiffening in your jeans.  
She doesn’t look too disappointed. Her arms go up behind her head, blindly searching the carpet until her fingers curl around the handle of the pair of scissors that…wait how the hell did they get there? You distinctly remembered them being on the desk.

Lydia looked at the pair of blades, a blank expression on her fine face.  
“What are you doing?” you ask.  
She slashes the blade across her cheek, barely even reacting.  
You bolt upright, reaching for her wrist. She fights you back, digging her tiny feet into your chest, tears bubbling up in her eyelids.  
“Lydia! Lydia, what the fuck?!” She is screeching, kicking, trying not to cry as she tries to put the scissors to her face again. “Lydia, please! Stop!” Your voice is catching on sobs, and your eyes sting, because you’re not even really trying to fight back, and you should be, you fucker, but what’s the point?  
The next few hours are a blur, but there’s blood on the carpet, and you vaguely recall the taste of bile in your throat as your dad screams at you and Lydia. His face looks kind of red from behind your half-closed eyelids.  
Is he crying? Why does he sound so sad?  
Stop that.  
You can’t be sad.  
Stop that.  
I don’t want to think of this anymore.

You give in to the calm and the quiet, but you just barely recognize the familiar feeling of your dad’s body as he gathers you into his arms.


End file.
